What is U.S. policy regarding whether U.S. companies can sell technology to Chinese companies that China can use to burn the U.S. in some way? It may depend on which day of the week we’re asking; American policy seems to be evolving as negotiations with China evolve. Nvidia is one beneficiary of the latest twist (“Nvidia Can Sell AI Chip to China Again After CEO Meets Trump,” The Wall Street Journal, July 15, 2025).
Nvidia said it has received assurances from the Trump administration that it can sell its H20 artificial-intelligence chip in China, days after Chief Executive Jensen Huang met President Trump.
The administration’s move marks a turnabout after the Commerce Department restricted sales of the chip in April, costing Nvidia billions of dollars. The news came during a visit by Huang to Beijing, where he was meeting senior officials. “I’m very happy,” he told reporters….
In addition, Huang said Nvidia has developed a new AI chip for China that he said would be useful for factory automation and logistics. The chip is built on the Blackwell architecture—Nvidia’s most advanced on the market—but is downgraded in some features to address U.S. officials’ concerns about exports to China, people familiar with the chip said.
AMD has gotten the same assurance that it will be able to ship its chips to China once Commerce approves licenses.
China is said to regard the U.S. change of heart as evidence of “good faith” in the current trade negotiations, at least according to “people close to official thinking” in Beijing.
How confident can we be that such chips, even if not as powerful as they might be because slightly crippled to address security concerns, will be deployed only to facilitate “factory automation and logistics”? Factories making what?
China wants advanced American technology. Will the tech directly or indirectly help to launch cyberattacks, power China’s censorship-and-surveillance Great Firewall, power cameras used to surveil and track down dissidents or persons belonging to the wrong ethnic group, power bombs and missiles, or bring about more effectively destructive versions of any of the other many things that the Chinese Communist Party uses to threaten, assault, oppress, and kill people? Will the Commerce Department be requiring “safeguards” against all possible malicious applications?
Also see:
StoptheCCP.org: “The Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World of Rare Earths”
Asia Times: “Taiwan deepens squeeze on chip tech leakage to China” (December 9, 2023)
